that," said Westover; and then he was
sorry he had said it, for it seemed to ask something of different quality
from her honest wish to make him know their regard for him.

She did not answer, but went down a long corridor to which they had
mounted, to raise the window at the end, while he raised another at the
opposite extremity. When they met at the stairway again to climb to the
story above, he said: "I am always ashamed when I try to make a person of
sense say anything silly," and she flushed, still without answering, as
if she understood him, and his meaning pleased her. "But fortunately a
person of sense is usually equal to the temptation. One ought to be
serious when he tries it with a person of the other sort; but I don't
know that one is!"

"Do you feel any draught between these windows?" asked Cynthia, abruptly.
"I don't want you should take cold."

"Oh, I'm all right," said Westover.

She went into the rooms on one side of the corridor, and put up their
windows, and flung the blinds back. He did the same on the other side. He
got a peculiar effect of desolation from the mattresses pulled down over
the foot of the bedsteads, and the dismantled interiors reflected in the
mirrors of the dressing-cases; and he was going to speak of it when he
rejoined Cynthia at the stairway leading to the third story, when she
said, "Those were Mrs. Vostrand's rooms I came out of the last." She
nodded her head over her shoulder toward the floor they were leaving.

"Were they indeed! And do you remember people's rooms so long?"

"Yes; I always think of rooms by the name of people that have them, if
they're any way peculiar."

He thought this bit of uncandor charming, and accepted it as if it were
the whole truth. "And Mrs. Vostrand was certainly peculiar. Tell me,
Cynthia, what did you think of her?"

"She was only here a little while."

"But you wouldn't have come to think of her rooms by her name if she
hadn't made a strong impression on you!" She did not answer, and he said,
"I see you didn't like her!"

The girl would not speak, and Mr. Westover went on: "She used to be very
good to me, and I think she used to be better to herself than she is
now." He knew that Jeff must have told Cynthia of his affair with
Genevieve Vostrand, and he kept himself from speaking of her by a
resolution he thought creditable, as he mounted the stairs to the upper
story in the silence to which Cynthia left his last remark. At the top